‘Racism, Postcolonialism, Europe’ is an international conference, sponsored bythe Leeds Institute for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Leeds Centre forEthnicity and Racism Studies and the Jean Monnet European Centre of Excellence.The conference aims to bring together around 60-80 European-based scholarsranging across an number of different disciplines (literary / cultural studies,sociology, history, political science) to discuss contemporary manifestationsof postcolonial racism within the context of the so-called ‘New Europe’.

Postcolonial racism is as difficult to define as is racism itself, although itseffects are undoubtedly material. Broadly understood, the term ‘postcolonialracism’ engages the contradictory desire for cross-cultural understanding in acontext of perceived cultural incommensurability. Postcolonial racism maskscontinuing prejudices behind a form of what might be called ‘selectiveegalitarianism’. Postcolonial racists might agree, for example, that rightsshould be given to the historically disadvantaged ethnic-minority citizens oftheir own nation, yet still find it in themselves to assert that these citizensare being pampered by the state, In some cases, they might voice qualifiedsupport, but only for the visibly assimilated; in others, they mightsimultaneously believe that ‘minorities’ have historically been given far toolittle but are currently being given far too much. One form postcolonial racismtakes is the heightened perception of reverse discrimination; another is theparanoid sense of incommensurable cultural difference – a differenceexperienced as destabilising, or even profoundly threatening, insofar as it isperceived to be neither accountable to the nation nor containable by the state.Both of these forms ally postcolonial racism to the ‘new’ culturally motivatedracism, a ‘racism without race’ (Balibar) in which cultures are deemed to beirremediably separate, and the discriminated power of biology is carried overonto culture, which proceeds just as inexorably to do the work of ‘race’.

The ‘new’ (cultural) racism, of course, is arguably not new at all even if it isunarguably racist, and often it contains within it more that a trace of the(biological) ‘old’. Postcolonial racism, similarly, is a mix of historicallyoverlapping racisms, some but by no means all of which have their roots incolonialist attitudes toward ‘other’ people, cultures, beliefs and valuesystems, etc.. To some extent these roots indicate the persistence of racism atthe heart of the so-called ‘New Europe’, another premature formulation thatbelies the simmering hostilities underlying and in some cases exacerbated by,recent processes of political and economic transformation within in unevenlydeveloped European superstate, The ‘New Europe’ is often associated with theputatively progressive forces of globalisation: e.g., economic liberalisation,the spread of democracy, the move toward more mobile, transnational forms ofidentity and citizenship. Postcolonial racism demonstrates, rather, thatglobalisation has helped create a network of competing provincialisms, much inevidence but by no means restricted to Europe, and that these suggest both theemergence of new decolonisation struggles and the persistence, evenreinforcement, of older ‘internal colonialisms’ historically connected todominating powers and authoritarian states.

Call for Papers

As suggested above, the conference aims both to chart recent manifestations ofpostcolonial racism and to assess its capacity to challenge, even shatter thesocial, political and economic confidences of the ‘New Europe’ as a liberatedspace, In this critical spirit, papers are invited on such topics as:

1.enduring vs. transforming racisms: the case for and against ‘new’ racism;2.the multiple conjunctions of racism and colonialism;3.devolution and the persistence of ‘internal colonialism’;4.multiculturalism as an antidote to racism / as a form of racism;5.Islamophobia and the ‘re-Orientalisation’ of Europe;6.postcolonial racism and the fetishisation of cultural. religious difference;7.racism and the European Community/the European Union;8.selective egalitarianism: human-rights debates in the ‘New Europe’9.racisms of migration10.postcolonialism, governance and community management

The cfp deadline for this conference has now been extended. Please email 200-250word abstracts by Friday the 3rd March 2006 to racismconf_at_leeds.ac.uk.